[Questions]1. Which attachment style do you think you are, and why?2. How do you get along with your family members, friends or romantic partners whose attachment styles are different from you and what are the most unbearable behaviors they have?3. Do you think how your partner acts can affect your attachment style? What attachment style you want your partner to have and why?

Common Controller StylesThere are are a number of styles of controlling behavior. Each type of controller operates with a different vocabulary, and each gives a different spin to the demands, pressure, threats and negative judgments that they use.

Punishers - Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt you. Punishers are the most explicit. They let us know exactly what they want and the consequences we’ll face if we don’t give it to them. They may express themselves aggressively or they may smolder in silence. In escalated situations, the threatened consequences of not acceding to a controller can be significant: abandonment, emotional cutoff, the withholding of money or other resources. The most terrifying extreme is explosive anger and/or threats of physical harm.

Self-punishers - Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt myself. Self-punishers turn the threats inward, threatening what they will do to themselves if they don’t get their way. High drama and an air of crisis, often blamed on the controlled, surround self-punishers who are often excessively needy and dependent. They often enmesh themselves with those around them and struggle with taking responsibility with their own lives. The ultimate threat self-punishers can make is that they will kill themselves.

Sufferers - Eat the food I cooked for you. I needed it for myself. I wonder what will happen now. Sufferers are blamers and guilters who expect us to figure out what they want and ensure that they get it. Sufferers take the position that if they feel miserable, sick, unhappy, or are just plain unlucky, we are expected to help them – even if they haven’t told us how. They let us know, in no uncertain terms, that if we don’t help, they will suffer, and it will be our fault. Sufferers are pre-occupied with how awful they feel, and often they interpret our inability to read their minds as proof that we don’t care enough about them.

Tantalizers - Eat the food I cooked for you and you just may get a really great dessert. Tantalizers put us through a series of tests and hold out a promise of something wonderful if we’ll just give them their way. They are the subtlest controllers. They encourage us and promise love or money or career advancement, and then make it clear that unless we behave as they want us to, we won’t get the prize. Many tantalizers promise emotional payoffs full of love, acceptance, family closeness and healed wounds. Admission to this nirvana requires one thing: giving in to what the tantalizer wants.These styles, of course, are not mutually exclusive - they can overlap.

[Questions]1. What type of controller (Punishers, Self-punishers, Sufferers, or Tantalizers) you are more afraid of? Why?2. Why people are easy to be emotionally blackmailed and unable to escape from the dilemma?3. Have you ever been emotionally blackmailed by your parent, boss or partner and how did you deal with it?